Right Thinking from the Left Coast

How Not to Fight Global Warming

Following on Alex’s post about the booming energy sector, you should check out this report from Der Spiegel about the disaster that is Germany’s green energy sector:

For society as a whole, the costs have reached levels comparable only to the euro-zone bailouts. This year, German consumers will be forced to pay €20 billion ($26 billion) for electricity from solar, wind and biogas plants — electricity with a market price of just over €3 billion. Even the figure of €20 billion is disputable if you include all the unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project. Solar panels and wind turbines at times generate huge amounts of electricity, and sometimes none at all. Depending on the weather and the time of day, the country can face absurd states of energy surplus or deficit.

If there is too much power coming from the grid, wind turbines have to be shut down. Nevertheless, consumers are still paying for the “phantom electricity” the turbines are theoretically generating. Occasionally, Germany has to pay fees to dump already subsidized green energy, creating what experts refer to as “negative electricity prices.”

On the other hand, when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That’s when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany’s energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011.

Emphasis mine. New gas plants are able to cut greenhouse gas emission in half through better engineering and using gas instead of coal. But somehow, green energy is increasing greenhouse gas emissions (although that may partially be because Germany is foolishly phasing our nuclear power).

It actually gets worse. Big factories are being told to shut down when energy use exceeds capacity. Spiking energy prices and taxes are incredibly hard on poor Germans, with some 300,000 having the power shut off every year for delinquent bills. The soaring bills are mainly going into some 4,000 different subsidies that mainly go to affluent people who can afford to dabble in green energy.

I should point that Der Spiegel is not a conservative rag that opposes green energy. What they actually are suggesting is modeling Germany’s energy policy after Sweden’s, which abandoned micromanaging in favor of overall mandates on renewable energy. This has allowed Swedish energy interests to invest in whatever technology is most promising (mainly hydroelectric, but many greens don’t like hydro). For the US, a better policy might be a carbon tax, which attempt to fold in the environmental cost of CO2 into the cost of carbon energy and could be balanced by cutting or eliminating corporate income taxes. But however you look at it, the system of micro-management and subsidies is a disaster.

Long term, the only solution to global warming is technological innovation. The current version of solar and wind are not up to replacing fossil fuels. The energy grid is not efficient enough. And there is no way of storing energy effectively. Here’s a question: will German businesses and universities make big breakthroughs in dark rooms? Will they make them when their industry can’t run because there is no power? Will they do it through a maze of red tape, subsidies and mandates?

The good news is that we have time to back away from this foolishness. The latest data show that global warming has slowed, as it did in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and climate sensitivity may have been overestimated. We have a lot more time to deal with this than we thought — decades more. That means we don’t have to break our civilization on the alter of wind turbines to stop global warming NOW RIGHT NOW. We have time to unshackle industry, fund basic research and make the true breakthroughs that will give our economy the same boost 20 years from now that fracking and shale are giving it now.

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The latest data show that global warming has slowed, as it did in the 1960′s and 1970′s, and climate sensitivity may have been overestimated. We have a lot more time to deal with this than we thought — decades more. That means we don’t have to break our civilization on the alter of wind turbines to stop global warming NOW RIGHT NOW.

Hal, if you’re going to start injecting honesty into the AGW argument YOU WILL RUIN EVERYTHING!

Well stated Hal. Not sure on the carbon tax though. What about the benefits of oil and coal, i.e. lives being saved because one can travel to say a hospital, food distribution that can’t be done any other way, the ability to migrate and find new opportunities in life that would probably have been sacrificed by many if it meant being great distances from family without a way to return, not to mention the entire economy is driven on power which is provided without any reasonable alternative at this time. There are offsets to the social cost. I’m all for alternative energy, and the sooner technology makes it so that it’s not called alternative, I’m fine with it. I have no more love for the coal and oil industry than they have for me.. But over all I agree with your approach. It has to be a reasoned approach and not the world is doomed.

By and large, I agree with your post here. The only thing I take issue with is this:

The latest data show that global warming has slowed, as it did in the 1960′s and 1970′s, and climate sensitivity may have been overestimated.

If you simply eyeball the temperature graphs, and start in 1997, then yeah, it looks like this. But once you factor in ENSO then the temperature follows the overall trend more closely. Truth is that we won’t really know if warming has slowed or not until we get past the peak of the next el nino cycle – maybe September 2015?

I’m with you stogy, I largely agree with Hal’s post, but also question that statement. We know there is still a large energy imbalance. It looks like that energy might be going into the deep oceans. It certainly isn’t being released. It’s way too soon to be calling it signal rather than noise.
I also question the “break our civilisation” alarmism.
I thin it’s going to be a combination of technological innovation, micro solutions (getting more and more properties or groups of properties self-sufficient), and targeted subsidies.

This.. is… GLOBAL WARMING! (spoken as Gerard Butler’s king Leonidas in the movie 300 before he kicks the emesary down the hole)

A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent.

The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.

Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.

The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has ‘paused’ since the beginning of 1997 – an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.

In March, this newspaper further revealed that temperatures are about to drop below the level that the models forecast with ‘90 per cent certainty’.

The pause – which has now been accepted as real by every major climate research centre – is important, because the models’ predictions of ever-increasing global temperatures have made many of the world’s economies divert billions of pounds into ‘green’ measures to counter climate change.

Those predictions now appear gravely flawed.

Ya think? And from what I see human produced carbon emissions have gone up, not down. My bet is they blame it on not enough carbon tax & more government control or something like that. The agenda hasn’t changed despite the facts…

If you simply eyeball the temperature graphs, and start in 1997, then yeah, it looks like this. But once you factor in ENSO then the temperature follows the overall trend more closely. Truth is that we won’t really know if warming has slowed or not until we get past the peak of the next el nino cycle – maybe September 2015?

Agreed. But the latest papers are showing less climate sensitivity, of order .15 per decade.

Alex, CO2 emissions have gone up. US emissions are down, but they are up everywhere else. Also, take that arctic ice analysis with a grain of salt. What matters is pack VOLUME, not area. Pack volume is still in a decades-long decline.

Alex, CO2 emissions have gone up. US emissions are down, but they are up everywhere else.

That’s the whole point I was making Hal. I am assuming we are limiting the emission discussions to the manmade ones too, not all the added stuff by nature. I never believed we really care about emissions because it was blatantly obvious to me that more modern and industrialized nations with wealth and options, would move to better technologies, especially nuclear and liquid gas, to limit their pollution. Nobody wants to live in the cesspools like those propping up in industrialized former third world countries like China and India, where the shit in the air is so thick you often can grab it with your bare hands. Who the fuck wants to live in a dirty world anyway?

But the problem to me has always been that if anyone pushing this AGW cult really believed the bullshit they peddled, they wouldn’t be imposing carbon taxes and big government solutions of our modern economies, but instead, offering to build nuclear and clean coal & gas power plants for the third world, free if necessary, to stop these growing nations from generating emissions. How much would it have cost us to turn the majority of our foreign aid from money pocketed by third world crooks into energy production facilities? We would have provided our people work – because of increased demand – as well as tackled pollution. But instead the only solution the AGW cultists have fought for was to impose more draconian energy policies on our nations that already were curbing CO2 emissions and demanding more government power over our freedoms and wallets, all so they could push the green technology their buddies & friends made mega money from while undermining brown/nuclear energy that did produce more jobs, wealth, and real viable energy.

I hate to disparage people, but after the realization that the only solution pushed by the AGW cult is no solution at all, I am left believing that the people that still believe in AGW really do not care much about science and are more about the big government control and their own anti-oil/gas/nuke feelings, and I have no empathy or sympathy for these people.

Also, take that arctic ice analysis with a grain of salt. What matters is pack VOLUME, not area. Pack volume is still in a decades-long decline.

Let me make a prediction and use about as much science about it as the AGW cultist have: watch that ice come back with a vengeance as the planet cools down. Contrary to the belief that CO2, and then manmade CO2 is the primary driver to global temperatures, reality is showing us that’s not the case. Cooling is happening on all the planets in our solar system, right after they warmed up too. Let’s be honest here Hal: we simply DO NOT understand this ultra-complex system and those pretending they do and that they know manmade CO2 is the bad agent are full of shit, and the real facts are showing exactly that. The major factors have always been the sun, the oceans, cosmic radiation, and natural phenomenon, but none of these lends itself to the “we need government control of energy and people’ agenda of the watermelons.

At this point I am convinced that we shouldn’t allow anyone to take away anymore of our energy options or freedoms for what clearly is a lie.

We compute grids of radiative-convective model atmospheres for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over a range of intrinsic fluxes and surface gravities. The atmosphere grids serve as an upper boundary condition for models of the thermal evolution of the planets. Unlike previous work, we customize these grids for the specific properties of each planet, including the appropriate chemical abundances and incident fluxes as a function of solar system age. Using these grids, we compute new models of the thermal evolution of the major planets in an attempt to match their measured luminosities at their known ages. Compared to previous work, we find longer cooling times, predominantly due to higher atmospheric opacity at young ages. For all planets, we employ simple “standard” cooling models that feature adiabatic temperature gradients in the interior H/He and water layers, and an initially hot starting point for the calculation of subsequent cooling. For Jupiter we find a model cooling age 10% longer than previous work, a modest quantitative difference. This may indicate that the hydrogen equation of state used here overestimates the temperatures in the deep interior of the planet. For Saturn we find a model cooling age 20% longer than previous work.

According to a September 20 NASA news release, “for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting a climate change in progress.” Because a Martian year is approximately twice as long as an Earth year, the shrinking of the Martian polar ice cap has been ongoing for at least six Earth years.

The shrinking is substantial. According to Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, the polar ice cap is shrinking at “a prodigious rate.”

“The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago,” reported Yahoo News on September 20.

Uranus

My Anus is warm, but no reports of Uranus warming, so hey, you’re right on this one.

“At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase,” said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.

“This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change,” said Richard Willson, a researcher affiliated with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years,” he said.

Is Man affecting climate? Plausible. Does man have all the answers, or even a clue when it comes to all factors influencing the climate, and thus can rely on man-made computer models to dictate what must happen RIGHT NOW to combat global warming? Not a chance. The last 15 years proves that.

1) Jupiter: That link is from 2008, relating to warming at the equator, not a global warming. That’s consistent with climate models that predict warming at equator and cooling at polls. Read the link.

2) Mars – taken from the Heartland Institute, a famous clearing house for junk science. Dating from 2005. Mars’ ice cap is not shrinking anymore. Mars also has a more eccentric orbit than Earth and minimal atmosphere so its temperature varies a lot more.

3) Warming on Neptune’s largest moons. If we’re going to extend this to moons, there are hundreds of bodies in the solar system. By random chance, you will find some warming, some cooling. Are they all warming up? Why only this one? The Sun radiates its energy out equally in all directions, not just directed at a handful of bodies in the solar system. If the Sun were warming things up, we’d expect warming everywhere, not just in carefully selected points.

4) The Sun – That study is from a decade ago. Since then, solar irradiance has leveled off.

See, this is what happens when you dabble in climate “skepticism”. You get ten-year-old misquoted links that are irrelevant to the main discussion.

Bingo. Decade old data that talks about decades or centuries of historical data don’t matter…unless it supports man-made GW hysteria. I already learned this lesson with CM. Next time I’ll listen better to the voice in my head saying don’t bother.

Nobody is funding climate “skepticism” because it’s not the answer the collectivists want to get. Hence the old data…….

Yes, the Hartland Institute is funded entirely by goodwill and unicorn fairies.

Data is data. There isn’t “skeptical” data and “belief” data. There’s just data. What these “skeptics” are doing is taking data and manipulating or cherry-picking it until it says the opposite of what it actually says.

Data is data. There isn’t “skeptical” data and “belief” data. There’s just data.

Correct, but the AGW crowd has “interpreted” the data to form a cause and effect relationships that are dubious given the mountain of unknowns. Hence, things like the unpredicted 15 year “pause” in global warming. It’s arrogance to believe that existing data definitively indicates that man made CO2 is the driving cause of AGW. It’s a sure bet that many more “unforeseen surprises” will create large changes to AGW models from which we are supposed to take decisive action now.

There’s a new coal-fired power facility north of Denver that is so clean that you’d think it was shut down when you drive by. It basically uses powdered coal in a fuel-injection system with a precisely controlled oxygen content.

Makes previous generations of coal-fired systems look like the obsolete dinosaurs they are, so don’t write off coal as “dirty”…

Correct, but the AGW crowd has “interpreted” the data to form a cause and effect relationships that are dubious given the mountain of unknowns.

DING! DING! DING!

And there has been even more interperting of data by the supposed AGW gurus, after which they conveniently misplaced the real data as well as the paperwork on the methodology used to make the interpretations that amongst other things yielded the false hocky stick effect, all the faulty models, and the predictions that have gone nowhere.

Correct, but the AGW crowd has “interpreted” the data to form a cause and effect relationships that are dubious given the mountain of unknowns. Hence, things like the unpredicted 15 year “pause” in global warming. It’s arrogance to believe that existing data definitively indicates that man made CO2 is the driving cause of AGW. It’s a sure bet that many more “unforeseen surprises” will create large changes to AGW models from which we are supposed to take decisive action now.

Wrong. The theory preceded the data, predicted the temperature rise before it was measured. And when skeptic Richard Muller took all the data, he came to the same conclusion.

It’s difficult to see a 150-year rise in temperature and come to any conclusion other than AGW theory being at least partially vindicated.

And Alex, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You just keep repeating these myths over and over again. You keep repeating this myth that the data and the methodology are lost They aren’t, as BEST showed. You keep repeating the idea that the hockey stick is a myth. It isn’t. The guy who discovered the flaw in the hockey stick analysis concluded that the analysis, using the correct methods, was still accurate (skeptics always leave off that uncomfortable bit of reality). You keep yacking on about models, ignoring the accuracy of the basic predictions and the fact that the models have done a far better job of predicting temperature trends than the skeptics have (you and every other skeptic have been predicting that temperature would fall for twenty years). And the models can be wrong all you want; the temperature have still risen.

Round and round; over and over. The problem is that I’m trying to arguing facts; you’re arguing religion. I’m basing my analysis on the data at hand; you’re basing it on the your belief that a bunch of hippies and Algore just have to MUST be wrong cuz socialism or something.

I used to be skeptical of global warming. But when the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do? Ignore the facts. That’s why all your arguments are based on 10-15 year old papers and arguments and ignore anything that has happened in climate science for the last decade.

“15 year (unexplained) pause in AGW” coupled with “the science is settled”, which leads to massive changes in our global economy and forced lifestyle changes on millions is NOT a rational set of supporting statements, imo. The former sort of disproves the latter, if you know what I mean.

Also, Hal (reflexively) tells us that te Heartland Instutute is BAD, but all the data generated and interpreted by those who stand to BENEFIT from AGW hysteria is GOOD.

Who OTHER than the industry insiders would want to defy the AGW religion with data that suggests otherwise?

There’s a new coal-fired power facility north of Denver that is so clean that you’d think it was shut down when you drive by. It basically uses powdered coal in a fuel-injection system with a precisely controlled oxygen content.

One is just coming online here in De Kalb Mississippi right now too. And this is big coal country.

Wrong. The theory preceded the data, predicted the temperature rise before it was measured.

Without burying me in a pile of links, please cite where and what was predicted and for what time period?

It’s difficult to see a 150-year rise in temperature and come to any conclusion other than AGW theory being at least partially vindicated.

Why? Has there never before in history been a 150-year or longer rise in temperature without all the man-made CO2? Because if there has been, then you can’t definitively pin modern temperature rise on CO2, can you? The earth has ebbs and flows. A 150 or 300 year period may be a small blip in a larger climate countertrend for all we know.

Who OTHER than the industry insiders would want to defy the AGW religion with data that suggests otherwise?

You heard about BEST, right? This was the massive temperature study funded by skeptics and run by skeptics for the specific purpose of disproving the temperature records. But the funny thing about skeptics is that when they actually do the research, they come to the conclusion that global warming is likely real.

Why? Has there never before in history been a 150-year or longer rise in temperature without all the man-made CO2? Because if there has been, then you can’t definitively pin modern temperature rise on CO2, can you? The earth has ebbs and flows. A 150 or 300 year period may be a small blip in a larger climate countertrend for all we know.

Not this fast. Earth’s temperature does ebb and flow. But it does so for reasons — usually orbital change, vulcanism, etc. In this case, the most likely culprit is CO2.

Without burying me in a pile of links, please cite where and what was predicted and for what time period?

The guy you want to look up is GS Callendar. Here is his 1938 paper. His later paper, which I can’t find the link for, predicted 2 degrees per century. Of note, he was the only one supporting this theory at the time. Even then, everyone was saying it was just variation and the Earth would cool off any day now. The first theory was published in 1896 in Svante Arrhenius. I found a picture of the article here (PDF).

With all the unknowns and adjustments to the models which wrongly predicted short/intermediate term temperature changes, I would think that some humble pie would be in order when claiming CO2 is the “most likely” culprit given all the unknowns in our atmosphere and nature.

Thanks for the link on GS Callendar, but I don’t see how one man’s prediction 75 yrs ago of 2 degrees temp increase per century has been “proven” given the relatively short time period since his prediction. Have other AGW proponents made temperature predictions that didn’t pan out? How do you average them in with the one guy Callendar who is so far kinda on track?

and the fact that the models have done a far better job of predicting temperature trends than the skeptics have (you and every other skeptic have been predicting that temperature would fall for twenty years).

The thing is Hal, most “skeptics” aren’t predicting temperatures because we understand that there are too many unknowns to reliably do so. That you compare the two as if they are competing to answer the same question when they’re not is telling.

And Alex, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You just keep repeating these myths over and over again.

Myths?

Shit, Hal, what will it take for you to admit that the fundamental and underlying bullshit all the other AGW cultists push, comes from stuff that Mann put together, through some magic that nobody else could verify, because he then conveniently misplaced or lost it, because, in his own words, he didn’t want the skeptics to undermine his agenda? You might not like the fact that the East Anglia emails showed this and would like people to believe that these revelations didn’t happen and are myths, but them is the facts. The cult of AGW has been like a high school clique: they have made up shit, demonized anyone that dared not agree with their crap, by of all things pretending that those that do not suck the cock of the AGW priests are doing so because of special interests, when no group had a bigger special interest than they do (the nanny state).

In any other scientific discipline, the revelations of what was done by Mann and his buddies would have discredited the entire discipline and all work remotely related or siting their work. Only the AGW cultists pretend that these revelations didn’t happen and that all is still well. And that’s why people with 2 firing neurons are turning their backs on the AGW cultists and their priesthood: even they can see this shit is not about any science or scientific principle.

Famous weather scientist, Dr. Algore , formerly associated with A.S.S.H.O.L.E. (Algores Scatological Scientific Hagiographic Of Ludicrous Environmentalism) until it’s disbandment, and who was the creator of C.A.T.S.H.I.T. (Cap And Trade Scientific Hagiography & International Treatise) later found himself linked to the famous group, D.O.G.T.U.R.D. (Dumpers Of Global Temperature Unit’s Research Data),headquartered in East Anglia. That was one of a series of astounding efforts to preserve and increase tax payer supported financial backing and grants to the huge group of pseudo scientists, hell bent on redistributing the resources of the developed world and driving those countries into poverty. This of course while enriching their own bank accounts…………..We wish Dr. Algore continued failure and hope that he and all the cru crew (cru-climate research unit) will be able to get the accommodations they so richly deserve, at the Mookatorium in Arbuckle, Virginia.

Xetrov, your own link on Mars – your own link said it is “likely not the sun but long-term processes on Mars and Pluto” causing the warming.

I remember this story because it has been so widely misused by contrarians. It is not proof of changes in solar output causing climate change. But more likely, more likely driven by local factors (if you can call a planet local).

Use of the term climate change “skeptics” is a horrible misnomer. Saying “look, it’s warming on Mars” so climate change is not happening is not being skeptical, it is basing your reading of facts on the outcome you want to achieve – which is to discredit AGW. The fact that you were willing to ignore the most likely cause because it matches your agenda falls well below what I would consider a reasonable standard of skepticism.

Use of the term climate change “skeptics” is a horrible misnomer. Saying “look, it’s warming on Mars” so climate change is not happening is not being skeptical, it is basing your reading of facts on the outcome you want to achieve – which is to discredit AGW. The fact that you were willing to ignore the most likely cause because it matches your agenda falls well below what I would consider a reasonable standard of skepticism.

Bingo. Decade old data that talks about decades or centuries of historical data don’t matter…unless it supports man-made GW hysteria. I already learned this lesson with CM. Next time I’ll listen better to the voice in my head saying don’t bother.